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Tour of Qatar Discussion
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 07-12-2025 09:51
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| tsmoha |
Posted on 11-11-2019 21:59
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Disappointed by Dennis performance in the epilogue, but at least our long time team member O'Shea delivered a Top-5 on the stage, securing us a nice bonus with the team's classification. Pretty sure it's the first time, that we take this classification here.
Howard finishing 5th in GC, adding a great stage-win and Dennis at least going up to 15th in the GC make it a successful race for Bennelong. We used to had slow starts to PT seasons in the past, so this is a nice outcome from Qatar.
Thanks for the great reports and congrats to the winner(s)!
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| Bikex |
Posted on 11-11-2019 23:58
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Oh man that's just disappointing on every level.
Thanks for the reports though Fabianski |
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| OlegTinkov |
Posted on 12-11-2019 00:45
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14th place in GC by our new signing Cameron Meyer is pretty good! Also I really enjoyed reading your reports Fabianski.
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| roturn |
Posted on 12-11-2019 05:54
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Thanks for the reports Fabianski.
Great read.
Groenewegen with his best race of the season I guess, which is great to see but from now on probably not anymore on this level.
2nd GC is a great performance only beaten by Grosu and ahead of Swift/Van Stayen/Coquard.
Paillot with the expected ~10th in the short TT, which is fine as well.
Not really happy with the depth here seeing the team line up:
All riders that could have got a top20-40 but instead were really unlucky in most splits. Somehow all but Groenewegen always were placed very far behind, which is not a good sign if this remains all season long in those "flat/TT" races as depth points will be important for me.
| 173 | Yoann Paillot | Aegon - Lavazza | + 5'23 | | 175 | Tom Dumoulin | Aegon - Lavazza | + 5'29 | | 176 | Lars Boom | Aegon - Lavazza | + 5'30 | | 179 | Frederik Frison | Aegon - Lavazza | + 5'34 |
As long as the leader is up there, nothing big to complain, just a bit worrying. |
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| TheManxMissile |
Posted on 12-11-2019 07:23
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Tour de France Champion
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 12-11-2019 07:52
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My man Gasper saved our trip here |
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| SotD |
Posted on 12-11-2019 08:43
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The sprints were just horrible. Coquard with one 2nd place, but other than that he was absolutely NOWHERE to be seen with amazing stats for the race and the best possible leadout in the race.
If this is the new trend in PCM I hugely dissaprove of this version, as it won't be a thing to have a top sprinter anymore. Subtop sprinters at a much lower wage is easily a better solution.
Vlatos winning the epilogue here once again is a huge + to an otherwise horrendous race. Coquard in the end 4th in the GC is something I can live with, but the performances in the sprints really made me lose interest after just a couple of stages. Despite some stellar work on the reports, I couldn't bother reading it, and just scrolled to the results to better throw away the dissapointment of the game being absolute shit.
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| roturn |
Posted on 12-11-2019 08:50
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SotD wrote:
If this is the new trend in PCM I hugely dissaprove of this version, as it won't be a thing to have a top sprinter anymore. Subtop sprinters at a much lower wage is easily a better solution.
Surely something to further have an eye on for the remaining season.
It`s not totally new in PCM18 though as PCM15 had the same issues.
e.g. Swift/Groenewegen last year in Qatar were totally ignored ending in late top20 only.
Groenewegen being ignored in Giro completely.
Both times they were in the top3 of the sprint favourites while 79 sprinters were taking part and even winning a stage or two. Obviously only two examples of my team, which obviously remains in my mind a lot better than other examples.
So PCM18 Qatar was something in between both extremes as every stage was different. In the end of the season those hopefully level somehow without hitting the same teams/riders too many times.
One thing to consider surely is to extend road levels from 2 to 3 or 4 even on flat stages, which could lead to better sprint organisation making it "fairer" strengthwise. |
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 12-11-2019 09:04
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World Champion
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Thanks, guys.
One of the biggest surprises in my team's history, right after Gesink's Vuelta and Chavanel's upset in Fleche Wallone.
With Grosu very unlikely to repeat the feat of 3 stage wins in a Grand Tour, I was looking where he could improve on last year and this was one of the races where it was not hard to get more points, but this is totally unexpected.
Thanks for the amazing reports!
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| Heine |
Posted on 12-11-2019 10:16
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Had hoped for a stage win, but apart from that quite happy with Fiedlers performance
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| cio93 |
Posted on 14-11-2019 11:47
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A Qatar without a sprinter is a boring race to follow, but of course the potential splits still kept me on the edge of my seat.
However, from PCM 18 experience I was quite confident that even the scary stage 5 wouldn't get us in too much trouble.
Finally, I get to rejoice at the sight of s.t. all the way down! Usually, it's massively frustrating in career mode.
And honestly, for the sake of realism, we should consider looking into the possibility of editing the stage files if the lack of gaps becomes too outrageous eventually. I know it's been an issue forever, but it does feel even worse in PCM 18 at times.
We came here with a (young) team for the epilogue and many potential breakaway riders, and probably did about as expected in general.
As for the TT, obviously Sütterlin's performance wasn't good enough for our expectations, yet again.
We cannot afford to sell him until Ganna gets at least to lvl4 though, with the significant amount of PT and PT HC races that suit TTers by now.
On the other hand, I was happy to see our depth riders join a few breakaways, although it was to be expected that we wouldn't be in the break that actually fought for a stage win, business as usual there. 
And the return of Filippo Ganna to the race that started off his career on a first high note last season was quite a success too. He stayed in the peloton in all 5 stages to finish a good 27th overall and 7th in the U25, surely he'll aim for epilogue wins here in a few years.
Too bad Remi Cavagna lost time in the early split, as his epilogue performance was convincing and would've given us an important third rider in a decent GC position to alleviate some of the Sütterlin losses. Just as Ganna, he has many more opportunities to do better in the future though.
I will not comment on the general state of the sprints here as I did slightly skim through them in this first reading, but I think I have mentioned before that they are likely not going to be the desired improvement in this edition.
I hope most of the GC Top 10 are still somewhat happy about their final positions though.
Thank you Fabianski for sorting out the usually messiest race of the season rather well!
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